Display posts from previous

Sort by

BOUGEAREL Alain wrote:
The "Center" of the World is the Earth (Ptolémé) géocentrism or is it the Sun ( Copernic) heliocentrsim?
Is the calculation of the "ascension droite" on the psCh VI card from Ptolémé sytem (then has to be dated before 1473) or is it from Copernic system (after 1473)?

In 1461 Regiomontanus left Vienna with Bessarion and spent the next four years travelling around Northern Italy as a member of Bessarion's household, looking for and copying mathematical and astronomical manuscripts for Bessarion, who possessed the largest private library in Europe at the time. Regiomontanus also made the acquaintance of the leading Italian mathematicians of the age such as Giovanni Bianchini and Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli who had also been friends of Peuerbach during his prolonged stay in Italy more than twenty years earlier. During his time in Italy he completed Peuerbach's Almagest abridgement, Epytoma in almagesti Ptolemei.

I think, that the Charles VI Tarot was made c. 1463, when Lorenzo was about 14 years old and when Pulci wrote the first half of his "Morgante" (1460-63). It's plausible, that Pulci was engaged for the education of the Medici boys, cause Pulci's family had a mill c. 5 km to a Medici villa in the Mugello, where Lucrezia Tornabuoni occasionally spend the summer time with their children.
The intensive work on the Morgante stopped then (in 1463), likely cause Lorenzo (14 years old) was then prepared for higher function in the Florentine society.

Toscanelli belonged to inner circle of the Medici family, as a mathematician he worked for the Medici bank.

1. I had at first thought that the Ptotemaic system likely present on the Moon card of the ps Ch VI Tarot would help for a datation....

But it isn't the case : it only certifies a datation after Copernic's death.

So my point has no interest as a clue for a a datation for the Astrologers Card.

2. I also pointed at Regiomontus as intermediary between Ptolemic contempary system and Copernic later sytem. Though Regiomontus remains Ptolemaic, he was, as disciple of Fuerbach his Master, very soon influenced by the writings of Nicolas de Cues, the transition between Ptolemé and Copernic visions of the World.: from geocentrism to heliocentrism.

... the title tells, that the person in the foreground is Marsilio Ficino. "marsilio-ficino-flanked-by-paolo-del-pozzo-toscanelli-detail-of-the-picture"
I guess, that the original picture (Toscanelli) is from the 1470s and Cosimo is then already dead.

"Thanks to his long life, his intelligence and his wide interests, Toscanelli was one of the central figures in the intellectual and cultural history of Renaissance Florence in its early years. His circle of friends included the architect of the Duomo, Filippo Brunelleschi, and the philosopher Marsilio Ficino; he knew Leon Battista Alberti, mathematician, writer and architect; and his closest friend was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, himself a wide-ranging intellect and early humanist, who dedicated two short mathematical works, both written in 1445, to Toscanelli, and made himself and Toscanelli the interlocutors in a dialogue entitled ‘On Squaring the Circle (De quadratura circuli) written in 1458.

Toscanelli along with Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) appears to have belonged to a network of Florentine and Roman intellectuals who searched for and studied Greek mathematical works, along with Filelfo, George of Trebizond, and the humanist Pope Nicholas V, in company with Toscanelli’s friends Alberti and Brunelleschi."

Nota :
Early 1462 ; Come de Medicis gives to Ficino the Dialogues of Plato in Greek to be translated.
"In 1462 by order and gift of Cosimo de Medici and with support of the Academy the manuscript translations were begun."

1463 : 9 dialogues are already translated by Ficino.
"Ficino had began his translation under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici in 1463"

Final publication : 1484 Platonis Ipera Omnia Ficino
"They were concluded under the beneficence of Lorenzo the Magnificent."

I'm sorry that I missed your earlier communique. I rarely have time, due to work, to visit this forum. (And, thus, I apologize in advance for any future delay in my response. No disrespect or lack of interest is intended) . . .

Phaeded wrote:

My bottom line on the CVI stigmata is the CONTEXT: the stigmata appears on a slain pope. Even if we can find clear cut images of the pope wearing dot-stigmata gloves such as on the CVI, the context places a pejorative interpretation of it. No way around that...and c.1478 (post Sixtus IV's stigmata bull) explains it.

Alternatively, in context, the trump may at one level bespeak the via crucis . . . a conflation between the virtue of Fortitude and the spiritual gift of Fortitude/Strength, whereby, death is ultimately defeated.

The Death trump's treatment of the emperor (at left) in green mantle is curious. Note how, in the positioning of his hands (viz. in the manner of the Venus Pudica) he resembles the female figure pictured in the final Angel/Judgment trump, perhaps, suggesting the promise of future resurrection.

Good observation, Kate. To press the point: these Popes/Emperors aren't meant to be bad people. They represent the hope of resurrection, exemplars, in fact. And stigmata, as in the case of Francis and Catherine, are honorifics.

mikeh wrote:Good observation, Kate. To press the point: these Popes/Emperors aren't meant to be bad people. They represent the hope of resurrection, exemplars, in fact. And stigmata, as in the case of Francis and Catherine, are honorifics.

That didn't stop Dante from placing Pope Boniface VIII in the Eighth Circle of Hell. Which is of central relevance IMO...

Popes are also considered "bad" when he and politically allied clergy are tied to an assassination in attempt in your city's own cathedral in an attempt at a coup d'etat (the pope also subsequently excommunicated Lorenzo de Medici - as if the conspiracy were his fault - and placed Florence under interdict as the Pope went to war against Florence). One of the main issues towards the peace of that war was the removal of the defaming fresco of Archbishop Salviati (among other conspirators) painted on the walls of the Bargello by Sandro Botticelli. Archbishops aren't meant to be 'bad people' either, but there you have it - c.1478-80 Florence had no problem defaming the papacy (and did so in word as well).

My entire argument is based on IF the 'CVI' can be tied to the Pazzi Conspiracy.

And the Death card of course does not exist in a vacuum, papally-speaking, as there is the curious portrayal of the Pope himself on the Pope card without the triple tiara.

Again, the last pope to wear a single tiara was the Dante-loathed Bonficace VIII (whom he practically placed all of Italy's ills on), as he was the one who added additional crowns to the original single one shown on Pope Sylvester in frescos in Rome. Given the resurgence of Dante studies under the Medici - Bruni's vita (1436), Palmieri's Vita civile (1439, where Dante takes the place of Virgil in a vision of the afterlife) and Landino's celebrated commentary on the Commedia, written during the Pazzi War and published the year after (1481) - the significance of Boniface VIII as a "bad pope" would have been well-known. And the Florentines knew full well what the Quattrocento papal triple-tiara looked like with Eugene IV living among them for years (such as shown on Eugene in the manuscript celebrating the consecration of the Florentine duomo).

Why then is the CVI Pope shown with an anachronistic papal crown if not referring to an earlier pope? And by extension, a cognate for the current pope who is yet another exemplar of a "bad pope."

The CVI artist was obviously told to depict the papal tiara with 'cross-hatching' (or some related word), but did so at an angle so as to form a diamond pattern, but the original 'cross-hatching is more orthogonal (like a 'basket weave' brick pattern), such as on the fresco cycle in the Roman church of Santi Quattro Coronati showing scenes of Pope/Saint Sylvester where one of the scenes shows Constantine offering St. Sylvester the tiara, the symbol of temporal power (the very issue at stake- Sixtus IV doing a land grab for papal dominions, to be doled out to his nephews - the word 'nepotism' coined for this pope):